By Yossi Schwartz (Member of the Revolutionary Communist International Tendency [RCIT] and Central-Israel Branch of Balad), 20.11.2016, http://the-isleague.com/

As soon as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu learned of the victory of Donald Trump, he telephoned, tweeted, issued a statement and posted a video celebrating the victory, calling Trump “a true friend of Israel.” Trump, on his part, invited Netanyahu to the U.S. to meet “at the first opportunity.” Read more »

On 18 September tens of activists of the National Democratic Assembly Party – Baladwere detained by the police over unclear suspicions. The Israeli police and court have kept the allegations secret and were withholding them from both the public and those that have been arrested.Read more »

By Yossi Schwartz (member of the Revolutionary Communist International Tendency – RCIT and Central-Israel Branch of Balad), 8 August 2016, www.thecommunists.net

The Palestinian Authority is preparing a lawsuit against the British government over the issuing of the 1917 Balfour Declaration that paved the way for the creation of the State of Israel. The PA’s Foreign Minister Riyad al-Maliki told Arab League leaders gathered in Mauritania, Monday, that London is responsible for all “Israeli crimes” committed since the end of the British mandate in 1948. (1) Read more »

Important notice: This article was submitted as a response piece to the editorial board of “Local Call” (the Hebrew version of “+972 Magazine”) on July 24th, after it published a pro-Zionist guest article opposing the BDS aiming at sawing demoralization among its supporters. After it already underwent a series of amendments and proof-reading, we were notified, on the 27th, that the editorial board chose to reject our article stating “style and content” as the reason. While hoping that in the near future we might be able to produce an article which meets the standards set by “Local Call” as far as “style and content” goes, we wish to wholeheartedly thank our fellow Balad member, Orly Noy, for her proof-reading, constructive criticism and genuine attempt to have the article published in “Local Call”!

Yonathan Mizrachi article (Why an economic boycott of Israel cannot succeed) is interesting but wrong. Its core premise is that given the shifts in the focus of capital and industrial production in the capitalist world, boycotting Israel cannot possibly be effective. Additionally, it claims that Israel’s propaganda accusing the BDS as a movement rooted in anti-Semitism is effective and therefore supporting it does more harm than good.Read more »

For a new World Party of Socialist Revolution in Order to Advance the Struggle for Liberation of the Workers and Oppressed!

Statement of the Liaison Committee of the Revolutionary Communist International Tendency (RCIT) and the Agrupación de Lucha Socialista (ALS), April 2016

The RCIT and the ALS send their May Day greetings to all fighters for the liberation of the working class and the oppressed people throughout the world. The current world situation is marked by an accelerated economic, social and political crisis of the capitalist world system. The capitalist system is in decline since the beginning of the world historic revolutionary period in 2008 with the outbreak of the Great Recession. The world economy never recovered from this recession and stands now before the imminent next, even worse, recession. We see an acceleration of the rivalry between the imperialist Great Powers USA, EU, Japan, Russia and China (Ukraine, South and East China Sea, Africa, Latin America). Furthermore, the working class faces an intensifying wave of counterrevolutionary offensives of the ruling class – austerity programs, police state, imperialist wars in the Middle East etc.. However, the worker and oppressed are continuing their heroic resistance against these counterrevolutions. Read more »

Prior to Israel Prime Minister Netanyahu visit to the US, many reporters around the world had expectations that the visit will be a failure as the US is distancing itself from Israel and, as a result, US military support for Israel will be reduced. Today the right wing in Israel is celebrating this visit as a great victory for Netanyahu’s policies.Read more »

No Peace with Apartheid – Mass Resistance, International Solidarity and Popular Struggle Will Free Palestine!

Statement of the Revolutionary Communist International Tendency (RCIT), 13.10.2015, www.thecommunists.net

In recent days we have witnessed an impressive upsurge of resistance by the Palestinian masses against the Zionist occupiers. Until now, more than 20 Palestinians have been killed brutally by the Israeli occupation forces, including a pregnant women and her three year old daughter as well as two youths in Gaza one 13 and the other 15 years old. Read more »

On August 30 we learned that a major industrial union, the United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers in the US has voted to endorse the (BDS) movement against Israel. “The endorsed resolution points to Israel’s long history of violating the human rights of the Palestinians, starting with the ethnic cleansing of 750,000 Palestinians in 1947-48 that turned most of Palestine into the State of Israel. It calls for cutting off US aid to Israel, US support for a peace settlement on the basis of self-determination for Palestinians, and the right to return. ….” The resolution also endorses the worldwide BDS– Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions – movement to pressure Israel into ending its apartheid over the Palestinians just as similar tactics helped to end the South African apartheid in the 1980s. UE is now the first U.S. national union to endorse BDS”. (1) Read more »

– An open letter from anti-Zionist Jews to the workers, the poor, and the oppressed by Zionism –

Part B

By Adam Sharonksy

IV- State, Religion and Race

The Israeli state definition as a Jewish state turns into a virtual race state. This is not because all Jews belong to a certain race or because there exists such a thing as race.[1] The Zionist idea adopts the Nazi “race theory” definition for who a Jew is (especially on the question of the Law of Return). A state based on those ideas must fanatically impose a racial hierarchy – a social order in which some ethnic groups equal more than others in all areas of life, from healthcare to personal security. Read more »

– An open letter from anti-Zionist Jews to the workers, the poor, and the oppressed by Zionism –

Part A

By Adam Sharonsky

Friends, when the Israeli government repeatedly goes to war and the economic crisis continues to deepen, it is a good time to reconsider support for the Zionist idea.

The Zionist Idea and Its Implications

The basis of the Zionist idea is the notion that Jews are not able to live in peace, equality, and security in the same country as gentiles, and therefore they must establish their own state in the territory of the “Land of Israel.” Such a notion echoes the anit-Semitic idea that the Jew is a foreign element in the countries in which he lives. But as we all know, this very “Land of Israel” was inhabited along its length and breadth by another people, Arabs, who saw it as their homeland and called it Palestine. Read more »

In mid-July this year six imperialist powers, the US, Russia, China, France, England, and Germany, signed an agreement with Iran which will limit the latter’s ability to produce enriched uranium to develop nuclear weapons. In return, sanctions which were imposed on Iran by the United States after the Islamist revolution of 1979 have been removed, sanctions which were expanded by the UN in 2006. These sanctions severely damaged Iran’s economy and caused much suffering (including a doubling of the poverty rate) for the Iranian masses. Read more »

No to Sectarian Divisions and Civil War! For a Workers’ and Popular Government!

Joint Statement of the International Secretariat of the Revolutionary Communist International Tendency (RCIT) and the RCIT Yemen, 3.4.2015, www.thecommunists.net

(1) Since the night of 25 March, a military alliance of reactionary foreign powers has been attacking Yemen. This gang of aggressors is led by the kingdom of Saudi Arabia and includes all other monarchies of the Arabian Peninsula (except Oman) plus the reactionary regimes of Egypt, Jordan, Sudan, Morocco, and Pakistan. In addition, it is also supported by Western imperialist powers like the US, Britain, and France as well as Israel. In an assault which Riyadh has dubbed “Asifat al-Hazm“ (Operation Decisive Storm), about one hundred Saudi warplanes plus allied forces are attacking the advancing Houthi rebels in seven different Yemeni cities. During the first nine days of this aggression, they have killed at least 519 people, including many children, and injured more than 1,700. Egypt has also sent warships to the coast of Yemen. In addition, Saudi Arabia has assembled as many as 150,000 troops along its border with Yemen, and Egypt, Jordan, and Pakistan have expressed their readiness to take part in a ground offensive as well. Read more »

We, members of the Internationalist Socialist League (ISL) in Israel/Occupied Palestine, as well as our comrades in the world-wide revolutionary communist organization with which we are affiliated, the Revolutionary Communist International Tendency (RCIT), wish to transmit to you today – residents of Bil’in and its neighboring villages, activists in the International Solidarity Movement (ISM), Anarchists against the Wall, and all the other activists, organized and independent, Palestinians, Israelis, and internationals – a message of solidarity and support for your just struggle until victory! We salute you! Read more »

On March 17th, citizens of Israel will vote for the Knesset – the Israeli Parliament. We view the Knesset as an undemocratic organ of the Zionist apartheid state. Voting for it cannot ever change this fact. In ideal circumstances the correct position would be to boycott these elections in favor of establishing a constituent assembly of all residents of Palestine – Jews, Arabs, Palestinian refugees and immigrant workers (from the river to the sea). Sadly, this is not the case today.

Note of the Editorial Board:The following document contains 19 pictures. They can be viewed in the pdf version of this document (see below). We alert Muslim brothers and sisters that this file contains racist cartoons from the Charlie Hebdo magazine presenting the Prophet Mohammed. We reproduce them in this file exclusively for the purpose to demonstrate the reactionary nature of this magazine.

* * * * *

All socialists and democrats in Europe are aware that the ruling classes in France and throughout the entire EU are working day and night to exploit the terrorist attack against the offices of the magazine Charlie Hebdo, depicting it as a European 9/11.[1]In France, we are already witnessing clear signs of a Bonapartist police state as 10,000 soldiers patrol the streets of France. The Belgium government has also mobilized 300 soldiers for their “Anti-Terror Operation” – for the first time in three decades. The attack againstCharlie Hebdo is also serving the imperialists as justification for extending of France’s and the US/EU’s wars in the Middle East and Africa, as well as the intensification of surveillance and intimidation of Muslim migrants in France and the EU.Read more »

The ruling class in France and the whole EU are attempting to utilize the terrorist attack against the Charlie Hebdo office as a kind of European 9/11. [1] This attack serves as a justification for a hysterical media campaign (“Islamists terrorists are planning attacks everywhere”) and for the mobilization of the army to increase domestic repression. It also serves as justification for the extension of France’s and the EU’s war in the Middle East and Africa. [2] It serves also as a justification to increase surveillance and intimidation of Muslim migrants in France and the EU. [3]

The elections to the Zionist parliament, the Knesset, are coming soon. These elections are scheduled way ahead of time because of the crisis faced by the Netanyahu government. This crisis developed as a result of its political failure to win the last war against Hamas this summer (i.e. operation “Protective Edge”). This war proved that the fossilized thought of Israeli governments could not only result in the killing of Palestinian civilians, destruction of infrastructure, but also in the death of Israeli soldiers. The general atmosphere of these elections is created by the recent terrorist attacks in Paris which intensified the already existing Islamophobia. Read more »

On 7 January, jihadist militants attacked the headquarters of the journal Charlie Hebdo and, after separating men and women, killed 12 men including the editor-in-chief, journalists, and policemen. The following day, another person shot at cops and killed two people. At the same time, several mosques were attacked by gunshots and bombs. 88.000 police across the country have been mobilized to hunt the jihadist militants. The social-democratic and liberal Hollande government, supported by the Communist Party and the Front de Gauche as well as the bourgeois media, is attempting to place the country in a state of emergency. In this way they hope to utilize the attack against Charlie Hebdo as a pretext to mobilize support for their reactionary imperialist policy. Read more »

The Revolutionary Communist International Tendency (RCIT) calls on
socialists not to give any support to the pro-imperialist mobilizations
organized by the French government, the EU bosses and the bourgeois
media. Read more »

On the role of female socialist revolutionaries in the struggle against gender discrimination in the education system (in Israel)

By: Rotem Elisha

Forward

Hello everyone, my name is Rotem Elisha, I am a high school student from Ramla – Israel. At the beginning of 2014 I initiated a struggle by opening a Facebook page titled “No More Silence – Fight for Freedom and Equality”. The idea for this came up as I was confronted with the discriminatory rule in my school which prohibits female but not male students from wearing short pants and skirts. The excuse that was given to me by the school management was that school girls should dress in a “decent” manner. If girls should be allowed to show off their legs at school, they further explained, it might prevent boys from concentrating fully on studying and cause sexual harassment. Read more »

As I write this article, Palestinian medical officials have announced that a Palestinian was seriously injured in clashes which erupted Wednesday morning on the site of Haram al-Sharif in Jerusalem. According to reports (Haaretz, November 5), the man was wounded by a sponge-tipped bullet fired by Israeli security forces. Read more »

In mid-September the US ruling class decided to bombard the Islamic State (IS, often called Daash in Arabic) in Syria. Already on the first day, American war planes killed or wounded dozens of Islamic State fighters in air strikes on the Syrian city of Raqqa and surrounding areas. It already started to attack IS fighters in Iraq in early August. Thus, we see that the imperialist war on Iraq did not end in December 2011. The official declaration, then, of US President Obama that the imperialist war had ended was an empty promise. The US is once again involved in a war against Iraq and Syria. Imperialism cannot survive without wars; but, as Lenin wrote, for humanity to survive we must destroy the imperialist system. Read more »

Peter Taaffe, the CWI’s long-standing leader, recently published a response to criticism against the position of his organization regarding the Palestinian liberation struggle. (1) In addition, on 31 August a public debate took place between representatives of the Austrian sections of the RCIT and the CWI in which the participants debated strategy for the Palestinian liberation struggle. (2) Furthermore, RCIT comrades in Israel / Occupied Palestine as well as socialists inside the Workers and Socialist Party (WASP) in South Africa regularly hold discussions with CWI activists on this issue. Read more »

The ceasefire agreed to by Israel and Hamas in Cairocame after 51 days of fighting. During this war Israel killed 2,142 people, most of them civilians including more than 490 children; it injured more than 10,000, and destroyed thousands of homes; it bombed mosques, hospitals, and schools. 69 Israelis were killed, nearly all of them soldiers. Read more »

After almost a month of butchering, the Zionist propaganda line is that Israel won the war against Hamas. If the 1,900 Palestinians killed, 80% of whom were children, elderly, and non-combatant men and women, plus thousands of wounded, is to be the measure of victory, then Israel certainly won. If the number of destroyed homes, schools, mosques, and hospitals is used, then, once again, Israel won the war. And if the number of destroyed tunnels is taken as the measure of success, then Israel won the war. However, if the weakening of Hamas is the factor which determines who was the victor and who was the loser, then Hamas won the war. Read more »

1. The Obama administration has announced another military intervention of US imperialism in Iraq. It has launched air strikes against the advancing forces of the extreme Salafist Islamic State (IS) which are advancing in the North of Iraq. The recent developments are a powerful confirmation of the total failure of the US aggression against Iraq in 2003 and the following occupation which lasted until 2011. The decision of the US government reflects the desperate attempt to stop its declining influence in the Middle East and to regain control over Iraq. Read more »

On Saturday night, July 26, we attended an antiwar rally in Tel Aviv organized by the Communist Party of Israel (CPI) and its Hadash front. Initially, towards evening, we were informed that the police had revoked the permit for the demonstration, but at the last minute this decision was rescinded and the rally took place, as planned. While, undoubtedly, fewer participants reached the scene due to the last minute changes, the rally itself was the largest against the Gaza war, in Israel, since the beginning of the military operation, with 5,000-7,000 people taking part. Participants held signs distributed by Hadash, Daam, and some Israeli NGOs. There were three Zionist flags and dozens of red flags. Read more »

Below we reprint a very progressive statement initiated by the Jews for Palestinian Right of Return. Our comrade Yossi Schwartz, a well-know, lifelong communist and Anti-Zionist, and key representative of the Internationalist Socialist League (RCIT-Section in Israel/Occupied Palestine), was among the initial signers of this petition. Read more »

Israel’s barbaric war in Gaza is not merely against Hamas, but rather is the latest round of violence used by the Zionist project to create, fortify, and defend a colonialist settlement state for “the Jewish people” at the expense of the displaced indigenous population of Palestine. In this war, as in all colonial wars, it is the interest of the international working class to call for the victory of the oppressed over the oppressor, specifically, the Palestinians over Israel. Until now, more than 600 Palestinians, including many women and children, have been killed during the fighting in Gaza. According to the Gaza Health Ministry, in Shuja’iya alone, located in the eastern part of the city of Gaza, more than sixty people were killed by heavy artillery and tank fire during the twenty-four hours between last Saturday and Sunday. Read more »

Support the Palestinian Resistance! For a Workers’ and Popular International Campaign to Boycott Israel! Down with the Regimes which Collaborate with Israel! For a Free, Red Palestine!

Joint Statement of the Revolutionary Communist International Tendency,Internationalist Socialist League (RCIT-Section in Israel / Occupied Palestine),the Communist Left of Australia and the Editor of the Blog vansterparlan.v-blog.se (Sweden), 22.7.2014

1. Israel’s ground offensive marks another escalation in its terrorist campaign against the Palestinian people. Until now, at least 604 Palestinians in the Gaza Strip have been killed and more than 3,700 have been wounded. This is not a conflict between two religious or national groups. Rather, this is an arch-reactionary war of oppression on the side of the racist apartheid state of Israel and a just war of defense on behalf of the Palestinian people! Democrats and socialists can’t help but enthusiastically support the heroic Palestinian resistance and work for the defeat of Israel. Read more »

On 20 July Vienna saw the biggest mass demonstration for Palestine in Austria’s history. Between 20 and 30.000 people marched through the streets of Vienna and expressed their outrage about Israel’s war crimes in Gaza. Most participants were Turkish migrants but many came also from the Palestinian, Egyptian, Syrian, Bosnian and Albanian community. Read more »

Supporters of the ISL and RCIT – please add this message to your signature.

Stop Israel’s Terrorist War against the Palestinian People! Boycott Israel!

We, the undersigned, are citizens of the Israeli State. We condemn the terrorist war which the government of Benjamin Netanyahu has launched against Gaza. It is a one-sided war which kills countless Palestinians, most of them civilians. Equally we condemn the indiscriminate repression against the Palestinian people in the West Bank as well as Israeli Arab citizens. Read more »

This article is being written on July 9, 2014, while Israel is bombing Gaza and rockets are falling in the region of Tel Aviv. We are being told that the Israeli government is considering a ground assault on Gaza which may be true or not. So far, at least twenty-seven Palestinians, many of them civilians including children, have been killed and more than 152 wounded. No Israeli has been killed. Ironically, Israel’s propaganda campaign claim is that Hamas, unlike “humanistic” Israel, is firing rockets because it wants to kill civilians. Anyone who thinks differently is branded an anti-Semite. Read more »

The kidnapping and killing by burning alive of Mohammed Khdair, a 17-year-old Palestinian teenager, last Wednesday led to some of the sharpest clashes since the year 2000. Palestinians in Jerusalem and in cities in the north of Israel – which is all Palestinian lands occupied since 1948 – have fought on the streets for several days now against the forces of oppression. These clashes are raising fear in the hearts both of the Israeli government and of the Palestinian Authority of a new intifada against Israel and the PA.Read more »

During the past week and a half, the attention of Israeli society has been focused on the reported abdication of three young settlers and the barbaric actions of the Israeli army against the Palestinians, actions which most Israelis support under the pretext of searching for the missing three. Read more »

Israel marked 47 years to its 1967 occupation of the West Bank and Gaza by pushing through ultra-nationalist legislation which recognizes Israel as a Jewish state, and removes the facade of a Jewish and democratic state. Meanwhile, around four hundred Palestinians prisoners are in the midst of a hunger strike with the support of Palestinians outside the prisons. Read more »

Statement of the International Socialist League (ISL) the RCIT’s Section in Israel/Occupied Palestine, on the occasion of the 38th anniversary of the first Land Day (1976),www.the-isleague.comandwww.thecommunists.net

The 30th of March – Land Day – has become a symbol for the mass struggle of the Palestinians, citizens of the apartheid Zionist state, against dispossession and oppression. The key question before political activists who oppose both oppression and the regime’s attacks upon their standard of living and democratic rights is how to turn this vital symbol into a winnable struggle. To do so, we must first draw revolutionary conclusions about the political situation throughout the world, across our region, and locally at home. If we won’t reach such conclusions and then act according to what they dictate, Land Day will be relegated to remaining nothing more than a symbolic struggle. Read more »